...suffers from "stupid protagonist syndrome". The whole first half of the game is you searching a flashlight. While doing so you pass lanterns just sitting there on park benches around every corner, but you can't pick them up. Also, while searching for your kid, you're going on every ride possible. Like "yeah, let's waste as much time as possible". Things like that instantly destroy immersion, which is fatal for a game that builds on nothing but storytelling and immersive exploration. The park itself is ok-made, but very barren. The scenery is just empty and uninteresting. The swan-ride almost makes up a fifth of the entire playtime and there's nothing to see at all. The rest of the park is the same, for an exploration game there's just nothing to see and explore here. Also at no point there ever is a choice for the player as to where to go. The game has exactly one route and obstacles that keep you from ever diverting from it. The game is somewhat saved by the second half, once you enter the haunted house. Although everybody knows what's going on at that point, at least here they managed to make the game a tiny bit scary.
Overall, I enjoyed the game. It is well made, the art style was nice, most characters were fun, the music was ok (a bit too kitschy at times for my taste), BUT: - Be aware that this is basically a story that runs on its own with very little interactivity. It has a few minigames and a few VERY basic puzzles and that's it. - The game looks like it could involve a lot of exploration and immersion, but it doesn't. In most scenes there's a given path and you can't leave it. At all. You can't jump over obstacles, you can't crouch under fences and you'll constantly get blocked by invisible walls that prevent you from leaving that one straight road you're supposed to travel. - I encountered a lot of "choices", where I didn't have a choice at all, where there was only a single option to choose from. In some instances, you're forced to choose between nothing but terrible choices. The game forces you to, for no apparent reason, butt into conflicts that aren't your business at all which seems like a very bad idea for a teen trying to stay under the radar of authorities. But the story will not progress, until you do exactly that. The game is a very "naive", childish and romanticized representation of living on the road, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It has it's charm and if you like laid back, relaxing games that don't really pose a challenge but offer more of an experience of watching a movie with an occasional choice in between, you might enjoy this game. You might get really disappointed, if you expected more from it, though.
As someone who played the s*** out of Privateer when it came out, this is the game I've been waiting for the last 20+ years. Yes, it's an arcade game, not a simulation. If you're going in knowing this, everything is perfect. From the truckstop-style atmosphere to the sound design and the music, the artstyle, controls, the dogfights are a space pilot's wet dreams come true... If you're a fan of the old Privateer and you like stuff like that, get yourself a HOTAS, grab a beer, crank the music up to max and you're gonna have a blast playing this!
The game looks really nice and the overall setting is very interesting, but gameplay is just broken. It's a stealth game. You're supposed to hide, sneak up on enemies and either avoid them or take them out silently. Neither works. When hiding I got constantly stuck in walls and other game world decorations, unable to move, forcing me to reload a previous save. If I didn't get stuck, getting caught seems to be completely random. Alarms seemingly get triggered at random, even when you're in hiding, on the other hand enemies can stare you right in the face and won't find you, as long as you're crouching in flowers. But good luck leaving your hiding place ever again without fighting, because enemies might stand there facing you forever and won't move or react to distractions at all. When trying to sneak up on enemies to take them out, sometimes they just either disappear right in front of you, or new ones respawn and pop up in full line of sight. Not only does this completely break immersion, it also makes the core gameplay mechanic unreliable and pointless. I really wanted to like this game, but in the end I'm just glad I'm one of "the happy few" who got it when it was on sale. Even if it looks interesting, I don't recommend buying this at full price.
Yes, U9 is flawed and I can see why fans of the series weren't particularly happy with it when it came out. I came to U9 having only played U8 and the Underworld games before and I just love the game. I may be nostalgically biased, but the game even today gives me a feeling of wonder and adventure when exploring the fairytale-like environements like no other game and it's sillyness is really charming to me. There are fan patches and mods to solve many of the issues the game has in it's official release and you absolutely need the Beautiful Britannia mod. With all that installed you'll get a laid back adventure game that focusses on exploration and discovery in a bright and colorful, open fantasy world. I'd give it five Stars, as it's a game I keep coming back to again and again ever since I played the demo version, but I had to remove one because you need third party patches to experience the game in it's best version.
The scenery is very well done and it's fun to explore the hotel at first, but the game lacks. A lot. The story is so obvious that you can foresee the biggest "twist" that's gonna happen in the storyline after a couple of minutes already. The "riddles" are very easy to solve and 90% of the game is spent waiting until one of the long and slow phone calls finally finishes so you can carry on already. These calls are so annoying. Every piece of information and every clue you find has to be commented by a drawn out phone call that almost always does nothing but explain stuff that you already had figured out yourself to begin with. Either that, or it's irrelevant and boring chatter. In the end this doesn't even make sense anymore. I don't want to spoiler too much, but basically you're getting called by someone who doesn't has access to his broadcasting equipment anymore. It looks like an "open" game, but it isn't. You have to follow the path exactly. You can't take alternative routes, doors are locked and unlocked to keep you on track all the time. Sometimes there would be faster paths (for example when getting the screwdriver, why can't I go through the staff area, why do I have to go "backwards" through the garage?), but the game just locks a door that previously had been open. This wouldn't be that bad, if only Nicole wouldn't walk as slow as a slug, even when running. It says in the description that it combines "mystery and horror". Don't be fooled, there's no "horror" in this game at all. I can recommend this if you want to play it for the exploration part alone and don't care about anything else, or if you have never ever in your life read or watched a mystery thriller before and might actually get surprised by the bog-standard storyline.
